


A Long List of Ex-Lovers

by thatsakitkat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alpha Sam, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst with a Happy Ending, Barely There Hetero Sex, Benny Cooks, Cheating, Dean Being an Asshole, Dean Lies, Guilty Sam, John Winchester Being an Asshole, Lawyer Sam Winchester, Lonely Dean, M/M, Manipulation, Mating Bites, Mpreg, Non-Vampire Benny, Omega Dean, Possibly Unrequited Love, Religious Humor, Sam Loves Dean, Sam at Stanford, The Author Regrets Everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-13
Updated: 2014-12-13
Packaged: 2018-03-01 07:10:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2764298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsakitkat/pseuds/thatsakitkat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Make me stay,” Dean says. Sam feels every breath and word. “Make me stay, Sammy. Or I’m gone tomorrow and I’m not coming back.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

  * For [weeping_ice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weeping_ice/gifts).



> title from Taylor Swift's "Blank Space" 
> 
>  
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> [My Tumblr](http://thatsakitkat.tumblr.com/)
> 
>  
> 
> Merry Christmas! ♥

Dean’s just there one day.  
  
Sam almost misses him, would’ve if he hadn’t been walking in just the right direction, looking in just the right spot. He sees a black jacket with the collar turned up and a set of broad shoulders and wheat-colored hair sitting alone in the middle of a sidewalk bench. Wind gives him Dean’s scent, instantly recognizable even after three years, like Sam could forget it, like Sam could forget the exact shade of blond Dean’s hair is and the exact way Dean sits and the breadth of his shoulders to the last damn centimeter.  
  
Sam abandons his group of friends, apologizes to Jess and tells her he’ll meet up with her at the party later.  
  
He gets on the sidewalk and when he’s just around the bench and Dean’s profile confirms it, he huffs a laugh of disbelief, and exasperation. Of _course_ Dean would show up like this: straight outta the blue on an overcast Friday just _waiting_.  
  
“Hey Sammy,” Dean greets, putting an arm over the back of the bench and looking at him with a smirk. It’s easy, like no time has passed at all, and that unsettles Sam more than a little.  
  
“What the hell are you doing here?” Sam exclaims. He just stands there instead of sitting beside Dean; his brother’s sprawling and taking up too much space.  
  
The smirk crawls off Dean’s face. “I’m just dropping by,” Dean says, low. It bites out of his teeth and he grimaces with it. “‘S been a while.”  
  
“It’s been three years, Dean. Why’re you here?”  
  
“Everything gotta have a reason?” Dean brings his limbs together and stands. He looks almost translucent in the grey light, and for a moment Sam wonders if he’s dreaming all this. “Can’t I just visit my little brother?”  
  
“You can, it’s just... well, I kinda thought you and Dad had, uh, moved on.” That thought used to hurt, ache in Sam’s chest at night, even if it had been the best outcome, even if that’s what Sam had wanted—ties cut on both ends, a brother, a father? No, haven’t heard from them in years, might be dead, who knows, who cares.  
  
He should’ve realized it wasn’t going to happen that way. Dean’s as inescapable as death and taxes.  
  
“Yeah, well.” Dean shakes his head and palms the back of his neck. His mouth and eyes look like they’re about to crumble under some great weight.  
  
He looks like he’s on a knife-thin edge, and Sam feels the cold air starting to leech through his hoodie. “Dean, where’s Dad?”  
  
“God, Sam, considering I haven’t looked at you in three years would a hug be too much to ask for?” Dean barks abruptly, throwing his arms out to the side.  
  
Oh, God. Sam looks at him and feel hot pain rush through him. Dean’s not here for any old reason, he wouldn’t just _visit_ he’s here because he’s alone because something finally got Dad—  
  
“How?” Sam chokes out, eyes starting to burn. Fuck, the last thing he said to Dad...  
  
“What the hell are you crying about? Exams that bad?” Dean steps closer, right up in front of him. “Hell, Sam, straighten up, you don’t want to get scoliosis do you?”  
  
Sam straightens his spine and looks Dean in the eye. “How’d it happen?”  
  
“How’d what happen?”  
  
“Dean, how did Dad _die_?”  
  
Dean rocks back on his heels, eyebrows shooting up. Then he laughs, and it sounds like a bunch of hard, sharp things in his throat. “What? You think I’m here to gently break the bad news? Sammy, you can stow the blubbering. Dad ain’t dead.”  
  
Relief almost knocks Sam on his ass.  
  
Dean puts his hands in his pockets and looks up at the sky. It makes him whiten further. “Guess the whole partners thing between me and him wasn’t working out. He left me at a motel in Oregon and that’s the last I saw of him.”  
  
“Dean,” Sam says softly, “Dad wouldn’t just abandon you like that—”  
  
“Well that’s what he did, okay!” Dean snarls. “It’s been a damn month. No word. I got the message loud and clear.”  
  
“Haven’t you looked for him? Maybe he’s hurt.”  
  
“Have I looked for him,” Dean repeats stonily. Rage trickles over his features. “You don’t think I haven’t? You don’t think I haven’t checked with Caleb, Pastor Jim, hell, even Bobby? Asking them where my Dad is like some kinda.” Dean pins his mouth shut and closes his eyes.  
  
“What did they say?” Sam asks after a few moments.  
  
“All the same thing: he ain’t popped in, but I’ll call you if he does. Could tell they were lying straight to my face.” Dean shakes his head and crosses his arms. He scuffs his boot on the cement and says, “Went for a beer at the Roadhouse last week. What do I hear? We saw your daddy in here last night. He asked for a shot of something strong and left. Ellen said she wondered why I wasn’t with him, and when she asked him she didn’t get an answer.”  
  
Dean grits his teeth, “I spent hours leaving him messages, crying on the phone to that fucking man. Thought he was dead. Then started thinking maybe he had just fucked off ‘cause he got tired of me dragging him down. Turns out I was right.”  
  
Sam chews it over in his head. “You know, Dean, maybe he had to leave you to keep you safe. Maybe he was too worried about you getting hurt and he didn’t want you in the crosshairs.”  
  
Dean snorts, “Oh, I’m sure he’s got some reason, some bullshit excuse. It doesn’t matter, Sam. He was all I had, and he kicked me to the curb. Hell, I shoulda gone with you when I had the chance.” Dean scrubs a hand down his face, looking around. “‘S a damn nice joint. You got someplace better we can talk?”  
  
Sam, feeling a little thrown in all directions, says the library might be less crowded. He shows Dean where it is, asks Dean how the hell did he get a Stanford ID card (Dean chuckles and says place might not be as safe as you thought, huh?).  
  
“I missed you, Sammy,” Dean says when he hugs him. Dean’s cool from the air outside and he smells like leather and sweetscent, intermixed and undoubtedly Dean.  
  
Sam slides his cheek against Dean’s affectionately then goes to pull away, but Dean holds him tight and sniffs under his jaw. He breaks all contact suddenly, takes a step back. “You got mated? Jesus, Sammy. You didn’t waste any time.”  
  
“Her name’s Jessica,” Sam supplies, drawing himself up.  
  
“She the blonde one that’s been walking with you?”  
  
“Yes,” Sam says slowly, peering at his brother. “Dean, how long have you been spying on me?”  
  
Dean shrugs. “A few days.” He flicks a table lamp on and off several times. “Not like I was hiding. You took a hell of a long time to notice me. Sammy-boy let himself get rusty.” Dean shoots him a smile over his shoulder. Sam almost thinks it looks flirtatious, but then again that’s the essence of his brother, natural as breathing. Doesn’t stop the prickles under his skin though, never has.  
  
“So why are you here? I kinda figured in this situation you’d keep on hunting. That dinosaur you call a car still running?”  
  
Dean scowls. “Course she is. Don’t insult Baby like that.” Dean trails his fingertips along the table’s edge, walking around it.  
  
Sam gets restless watching him, and clears his throat. “Well you know, Dean, I’m pretty busy. It’s the middle of spring quarter and I have a ton of work I need to do this weekend.”  
  
“I heard there was a party tonight.”  
  
“There’s parties every night,” Sam says. “It’s just a kegger.”  
  
“Ah, now, I like keggers.” Dean turns around. “You’re going right?”  
  
“Yeah. Kinda have to.”  
  
“Gave into the peer pressure huh? Drinking and smoking on the reg?”  
  
Sam laughs. “Yeah right. I’m not you.”  
  
“You’ll get there.” Dean’s still smiling. It doesn’t look forced, but it’s cutting into his cheeks just the same. It’s the smile Dean gives when he wants something.  
  
Sam clears his throat again. “So you wanna go to the party, okay. Where’re you gonna be tomorrow?”  
  
“If there’s good beer at the party? Puking into a scummy toilet and not remembering last night.” Dean waves a hand. “Don’t worry, ‘m not trying to shack up with you. Got a room.”  
  
“How long are you staying in California?”  
  
“Sammy... so eager to get rid of me.” Dean steps closer. “You know, wasn’t lying when I said I missed you. Why’d you stop calling?”  
  
Sam shifts his shoulders. “Like I said, I’ve been busy.”  
  
“Too busy to spend five minutes on the phone?”  
  
Dean should understand, damn it. “And what, keep on picking at the scab?”  
  
“Oh, so it hurt you, huh.”  
  
“Yeah, Dean. I missed you too, you know. But I thought cutting the cord would be better for both of us.” Sam rubs his eyes. “Look man, can we not get into this now? It doesn’t matter. You’re here.”  
  
“Yeah, I’m here,” Dean says, moving past Sam.  
  
Sam watches him head out the doors and wonders what happened.  
  
\--  
  
The party isn’t too weird. Sam introduces Dean to Jessica, to Brady, Luis, and Chris. He gets Dean his own solo cup and tells him to guard it and not accept any drink he hasn’t spritzed himself. The whole place reeks of alphas. His brother’s sweetscent stands out like a white thread.  
  
“Is your brother mated?” Jessica asks, popping a french fry in her mouth. She’s looking at Dean curiously as he stands in the circle of beta girls that tend to swarm him.  
  
Sam chuckles. “Dean? Yeah right. Mention commitment and he hightails it in the other direction.” Sam scowls and finishes off his cup in a long pull. Been three years but he’s still bitter about _that_ , and Dean seems like he is too.  
  
Jessica turns a bit in his lap and touches his face. “Are you sure he’s your brother? You look nothing alike.”  
  
Sam laughs. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” he says, tilting his head to kiss her. He puts his empty cup on the table and steals a french fry before he hums and wraps Jessica closer to him, looking at Dean over her shoulder.  
  
Dean’s managing to keep all the girls’ attention, gesturing and involving all of them in whatever exploit he’s telling. Sam aches, looking at him, in a way he hasn’t ached in a long time. Dean’s gorgeous with his heart-red lips and spring-green eyes. He’s inescapable, and unattainable.  
  
“Dean looks more like our mom.”  
  
“You smell sad,” Jess says. “Why don’t you go talk to him?”  
  
“We don’t really get along.” Sam closes his eyes and plays with her hair. He pulls it away from her neck and inhales their combined scents. He got mated early, very early; nineteen and made the biggest commitment of his life. He was sure he wouldn’t ever see Dean again. “‘Sides, he’s busy with his girls,” Sam adds.  
  
“And his boys.”  
  
Sam opens his eyes. Brady’s on one side of Dean, and that’s fine, he’s a beta he’s _safe_ , but on Dean’s left is some guy Sam doesn’t recognize, standing much too close, touching way too much. Dean doesn’t even seem like he cares, still blabbering on about whatever to the little crowd drawn to his altar.  
  
Sam tries to rationalize away the anger burning his veins. Dean’s an omega, he’s bound to be a spectacle wherever he goes, especially here where the omega pickings are slim.  
  
“Dean looks like he can take care of himself,” Jess says. She must’ve picked up on the sour turn of his scent. “I’ve never seen an omega like him before.”  
  
 _That’s the problem_ , Sam thinks. No one’s ever seen anything like Dean before.  
  
The alpha (must be, must be, Sam can tell even if he can’t pick out his scent) leans entirely too close to his brother and says something into his ear. From his lascivious smile when he pulls back, Sam doesn’t have to guess.  
  
Sam’s breathing hard now through his nose, leg jigging. He almost topples Jess over when Dean returns that smile, body language wide open, available, moving in to whisper his response in the guy’s ear.  
  
From Sam’s view, everyone is way too close to Dean: the girls, Brady, the alpha Sam wants to choke, like they’re all wrapping around him and trying to swallow him down. “I’m sorry,” Sam says, kissing Jess’ neck before he eases her out of his lap and stands. “I have to—” he doesn’t finish, just starts walking over.  
  
Dean catches his eyes over a girl’s head and if anything presses in tighter to the man next to him. Sam squeezes past Shelly and Rachel to take his brother by the wrist.  
  
“Sam!” Brady exclaims, clapping him on the shoulder. Sam almost snarls at his touch he’s so wound up. “Hey, good for you for joining the party. You need a drink? Looks like you need a drink.”  
  
“I’m fine,” Sam says, looking at Dean. His brother’s drinking almost fucking delicately from his cup and looking at the alpha over the rim, through his eyelashes. The alpha looks like he’s gone complete mouth-breather as he stares back stupid and dazed.  
  
Brady looks pretty high tonight; his eyes are red and shiny, flush in his cheeks. He runs a hand through his blond hair and gestures at Dean. “We were just talking to your brother.” He cracks a wide smile at Dean, then at Sam. “Whew. I can see why you didn’t tell us sooner. He’s hot _and_ fun. I might like this Winchester more already.”  
  
Sam rolls his eyes.  
  
“Aw, don’t discount Sammy here,” Dean says, wrapping his fingers in Sam’s, _holding his hand_ , and Sam clenches his teeth. It’s a cruel joke. Dean’s picking at his scab. Sam holds onto Dean’s hand anyway. “He might not be as pretty, but he’s got bigger feet.”  
  
The girls laugh and Brady loses it in a series of marijuana-induced giggles. Hot in the face, Sam glares at the only one not laughing (stupid awestruck knotbrain) before he drags Dean away from his disciples.  
  
The closest door is unlocked and the room is empty. Sam pushes Dean in and then shuts it, rounds on his brother. “What the hell are you doing?”  
  
He gets in Dean’s space, straightens his back. Dean looks up him blithely after another drink.  
  
“I’m havin’ some fun, Sam. It’s a party.” Sam watches his throat work as he finishes off his cup, head angled back. Dean tosses the plastic on the nearest flat surface and rolls his shoulders. “I like your friends. They’re good people. What’s your problem? I’ve been leaving you alone.”  
  
“You think I want you to leave me alone?”  
  
“I can take a hint. Know you don’t want me around. I’ll be outta your hair tomorrow.”  
  
“I didn’t say that. I didn’t say I wanted that.”  
  
“Yeah, whatever.” Dean looks up at the ceiling and sighs. “What do you want? You mad about the dick joke? I meant it as a compliment.”  
  
“You told me,” Sam begins, slow and even, “that you liked girls.”  
  
“What?” Dean barks. “I love girls! You know that!”  
  
Sam shakes his head. “When you told me no,” he starts again, and his voice shakes this time, “you said it was because you liked girls. So, I’m wondering, Dean, I’m wondering if you only liked girls, why were you flirting with that alpha out there? Huh?”  
  
Dean stares at him. “I can’t believe you’re bringing that shit up. Sam, it’s been years, you got a mate, it’s really time you got over it.”  
  
Sam closes his eyes. “Why’d you lie to me?”  
  
“Why’d you leave me?” Dean counters, and his voice is hoarse and very loud; it moves against Sam like a force. “You couldn’t have wanted me _that_ much if you could just leave me high and dry in the middle of the night.”  
  
“It hurt too much to stay,” Sam says, turning; there’s nothing for him here, never has been.  
  
“Bullshit,” Dean bites out, grabbing him, crashing him into the door.  
  
Dean yanks on fistfuls of his shirt and hisses, “Fuck you. Fuck you, Sam. It’s not my fault you left, _you_ made that decision, don’t you try and pin that shit on me. _You_ left _me_.”  
  
“Tell me the real reason,” Sam says. “You lied; you said no, you said it was because you didn’t like guys. You lied. I want the real reason.”  
  
Dean smiles coldly. He leans up and his mouth leaks heat into Sam’s ear. “I found Sammy’s papers,” he whispers. His body’s pressed intimately to Sam’s, hands on his waist, hot and wrong.  
  
Sam can’t breathe. Dean leans further into him and brings a hand up to his head, sneaks it through his hair. “Amazing what you can learn about a man when you go through his bag. I learned that Sammy wanted to leave me.”  
  
Sam feels like the door might give under their weight, and they’ll spill like sin out into the party. There’s only an inch of wood that separates this dirty thing and the good, drunk people and their _Stacy’s Mom_ on the other side. Sam flattens his palms on the door and feels the bass vibrate.  
  
Dean’s lips leave his ear and he buries his face in his shoulder instead. “I find out you were gonna run away to Stanford, and then I find out you wanna fuck me before you leave, just to twist the knife a little more.”  
  
“No, _no_.” Sam swallows. “No, I woulda took you with me. Or—fuck—if I had you, I might’ve stayed. But you said no, you made me feel like I was a sick freak, there was nothing keeping me there. Damn it, Dean!” Sam pounds a hand back against the door. “How could you think I just wanted to hurt you?”  
  
“‘Cause that’s all you do. You, Dad... you drain me dry and leave.”  
  
“I would’ve stayed—”  
  
Dean raises his head off his shoulder. “You should’ve anyway!” his breath gusts in Sam’s face, smelling like Milwaukee’s Best and Fritos. “I’m your _brother_. I shouldn’t have to let my brother _fuck_ me to keep him around.”  
  
Sam winces. There’s _that’s not it, it wasn’t like that, I wanted more_ , coming up his throat, but Dean’s lips ghost over his chin, and he rocks against Sam, tilts his hips just right. Sam’s mouth parts on a gasp, and he reflexively wraps his arms around Dean, hands overlapping in the small of his back.  
  
“Make me stay,” Dean says. Sam feels every breath and word. “Make me stay, Sammy. Or I’m gone tomorrow and I’m not coming back.”  
  
“Wuh—what—”  
  
“I’m giving you what you want. I’m gonna let you fuck me. Want you too.” His lips are so close. Sam could tilt his head and catch them in his. He could roll his hips against Dean’s, he could reach into Dean’s jeans and finger him and jerk him off, he could force Dean into the floor and bury himself where he’s always wanted to.  
  
“I can’t,” Sam sobs. He’s so hard, Dean’s so hard. “I can’t—Jess—I have a mate. I can’t, I love her, I love her.”  
  
“You love her more than me?”  
  
That doesn’t sound right. Sam instinctively says, “No.” He says, “Love you more.”  
  
“You love your brother more than your mate?” Dean chuckles. “Sammy, that’s sick. That’s not normal. Wanting to fuck your brother...”  
  
“You’re sick too then. I didn’t start this.”  
  
“Yeah you did,” Dean says lightly, fingers under Sam’s shirt and clawing into his skin. “You started it three years ago. But it’s okay, it’s okay, ‘cause I want it too, and I’m sick too.” Dean grinds up, slow slide of their cocks through their jeans.  
  
“I’m tired of being alone,” Dean says, his mouth over Sam’s, not exactly kissing, just sharing hitched exhales.  
  
Sam should push him away. Then go back to the party and rejoin Jess and drink some more. Smile. Make Brady laugh his higher-than-a-fuckin’-kite laugh and inconspicuously push away Rachel’s hand that likes to creep onto his thigh when she’s drunk.  
  
He doesn’t think he can _move_. The pressure of Dean’s dick sliding, grinding, pressing into his has him grimacing in pleasure, winding him up till he just explodes, there, in his jeans so hard he almost cries.  
  
Dean pulls Sam’s hair when he comes, vibrating with an exhausted groan of relief. Sam holds him tight. He feels more awake and alive than ever, like his body knows this isn’t it and he’s just gearing up for the main event.  
  
He brushes his lips against Dean’s, the pink skin of forbidden fruit, then ducks his face into Dean’s neck, nosing along his red joining spots. There’s an overwhelmingly sweet smell; Sam can almost taste sugar melting on his tongue, cold ice cream on hot days. It’s unmated and ripe scent, and therein lies the problem—Dean isn’t supposed to smell like this to Sam, it’s not natural, it’s not meant to be something that makes him _want_.  
  
Sam doesn’t know what went wrong there, how Dean ended up smelling like potential instead of family. Internet and therapy’s told him it’s not his fault, they’ve said it’s like a mental illness and they’ve said it would go away.  
  
Dean says it’s a fifteen minute drive to his motel room. Sam already has an excuse for Jess on his lips before Dean’s even finished. He says, yes, okay, let’s go.  
  
No one looks at him funny when they step out. Jess looks only encouraging when Sam tells her he’s spending the night with his brother so they can start catching up.  
  
Sam feels like he should’ve been caught out. He’s still waiting for the other shoe to fall when he’s in the car with Dean and the campus buildings are in the rearview.  
  
\--  
  
“How long’ve you and Jessica been together?” is the first thing out of Dean’s mouth when they’re in the room.  
  
Sam looks at him, feels like rushing out the door. “Please don’t,” he says.  
  
Dean swings the keys onto the end table and steps in close. His scent acts as a balm to the guilt-burn, and Sam reminds himself that it isn’t his fault. “This has nothing to do with her,” Dean says, catching Sam’s eyes. “This is between you and me, goes back way further than her. Hell, you don’t even have to look at this like sex. It’s more like—”  
  
Sam shakes head. “I know what this is, Dean. I fuck you or you’re gone forever. I don’t need it handed over with kid gloves.”  
  
“You want it anyway.” Dean pets his shoulders. “‘M just giving you what you want. Helping me, helping you.”  
  
“One night’s not gonna fix you,” Sam says softly.  
  
Dean smiles humorlessly. “It won’t fix you either.” And he shoves Sam.  
  
The backs of Sam’s knees hit the bed and he crashes onto a stiff mattress and the kind of rough covers he hasn’t felt in years.  
  
Dean stands there and starts stripping, quick and efficient, not the sexy way Sam’s imagined once or twice. His heart still beats faster.  
  
Jacket off, Dean pulls his shirts over his head, revealing fair, freckle-scattered skin. The amulet bounces against his sternum and Sam finds it funny that he still hasn’t taken that damn thing off after all this time.  
  
Dean bends, haphazardly undoes his laces, yanks his boots off, his socks. When he’s unclasping his belt, he finds Sam’s eyes and smirks. “College boy liking the show?”  
  
Sam flushes but doesn’t, can’t, look away. Dean lets his jeans pool around his feet and steps out of them. He’s in just his boxer briefs now, cock bulging the front obscenely, damp from where he came in them earlier. Dean hooks his fingers in the fabric and shimmies his hips ridiculously as he slowly peels them down his thighs.  
  
Sam rolls his eyes. “C’mon, Dean.” But he licks his lips as Dean’s cock is revealed, standing up straight from a thatch of tawny, tightly wrung curls.  
  
Sam can’t really believe it, eyes racing up the rest of Dean’s body. His brother’s naked and hard and he’s stalking towards the bed, climbing up onto it. He sits on Sam’s thighs and Sam jumps when Dean’s hands go straight for his jeans. He relaxes, looking at his brother; the strong set of his shoulders and the familiar black cord around his neck, his scent and the way he purses his lips as he undoes Sam’s belt.  
  
“You look,” Sam tries, voice low; still can’t believe this is happening. He wants to say beautifulprettyhot, but that doesn’t encapsulate a dream come true does it?  
  
Dean pulls his belt from its loops with a leathery rustle and drops it by the bed. He unbuttons and unzips him, then pulls on the waistband. Sam lifts his hips and Dean draws his jeans and his shorts just past his cock. Sam sighs in relief when it springs out in the free, cool air.  
  
“Nice,” Dean says, touching him. It’s a burst of electricity through every part of Sam, gets rid of any remnants of self-consciousness and has a moan pealing from his lungs. Dean looks at him with half-lidded eyes. “Won’t tease you too much.”  
  
He scoots up Sam’s body and leans over him, plants his hands near Sam’s shoulders. Sam looks up at the amulet hovering over him and feels the smooth inside of Dean’s leg brush against his cock when he starts to lower himself.  
  
Sam freezes and grabs Dean’s hips to keep him still. “Dean wait, we need a condom.”  
  
“Don’t worry about it,” Dean growls, his hips trying to swerve out of Sam’s hands.  
  
“Don’t worry about it? When it’s 98 percent likely you could get pregnant after just one time?”  
  
“Man, you really don’t wanna get fucked do you.” Dean shakes his head. “Does that percentages talk work on Jess?”  
  
“Dean, please. You gotta have one right? Tell me you have one.”  
  
“Sammy, c’mon. We don’t need one; I’m on the pill.”  
  
Sam’s hold slackens. “Really?”  
  
“I don’t want some brat running around either. Now can we get this show on the road or what?”  
  
“I—I guess.” Sam lets him go. He puts his hands on Dean’s thighs instead, feels them flex and bunch, feels his dick hit under Dean’s balls. “Oh my God,” he says, trembling; Dean’s _scorching_ there, wet, hot and dripping and he opens up easy as Sam’s cock parts him.  
  
“Jesus,” Dean gasps, bowing his head. Sam watches the pleasure shut his eyes and gape his lips. His descent is quick and effortless; his body just adjusts and gulps Sam in like a starving mouth. Wraps him in exquisite constriction from tip to root, where Dean settles out with a slick noise.  
  
Sam can’t keep his eyes open. He lets them flicker closed and cross beneath the lids. This isn’t his mate, it shouldn’t feel this unbearably good, it shouldn’t. But there’s nothing else in recent memory that’s felt like this. He feels like he’s going to suffocate and fall apart beneath Dean.  
  
“You’re so big, Sammy,” Dean grunts, moving his hips a little back, a little forth.  
  
Sam’s not even sure he’s remembering to breathe. He doesn’t feel anything but Dean’s body, floating formlessly, his cock the only thing tying him to this bed, this motel room.  
  
He feels Dean’s hands on his chest. They’re heavy on his ribs as Dean draws himself up.  
  
“ _Oh_ ,” Sam moans when Dean slides down again. His heart is stuttering in his chest and he thinks he’s ready to come already.  
  
Dean makes a similar sound that might be him mocking Sam, and holds onto his shirt as he rises up. The fall is quicker this time, and the next time, and after that Dean’s moving in earnest and they’re both panting like animals.  
  
“Fuck,” Dean says, adjusting his position, almost tipping over as he does. He yanks at Sam’s shirt and says, “Fuck, help me, Sammy, help me.”  
  
Sam nods frantically. He reaches blindly for Dean and finds his wrists, his hands. He holds those tight and plants his feet on the mattress. Their hips slap, lightning crack, when Sam thrusts up into him.  
  
“Go,” Dean’s gasping, “go, Sam, harder, faster,” and Sam does, and he’s not _used_ to this goddamn it, being so rough and base. He’s used to slow rocking hips and lips on his, a languid in-and-out. Not this wild, twisted thing with his own brother where he doesn’t know up or down from him and Dean.  
  
Dean squeezes his hands. “C’mon Sammy, fuck me. Know you can do better than this. I wanna feel it tomorrow.”  
  
“I’m—trying—” Shit, he might be _crying_. He’s fucking his brother, cheating on his girlfriend, out of his head with how good it feels.  
  
“Knot me, Sammy,” Dean rasps and Sam groans lowly, animal part of his brain locking onto that suggestion and making him forget what a piece of shit he is, turning the room into nothing and him and Dean into just alpha and omega.  
  
Instincts high, he growls softly at his brother when Dean takes their joined hands and pushes Sam’s down beside his head, but the startled moan Dean gives at the angle shift makes Sam forget about his submissive position.  
  
Dean grinds over him, encouraging his knot to blow up, low voice urging him. Second orgasm of the night overwhelms Sam and rockets flare behind his eyelids as his knot finds its home in Dean, fills out inside him. Each spurt of come he feels as lines of heat racing up and out of his dick.  
  
“Good, Sammy, good,” Dean says while Sam just breathes, body feeling soupy with sweat and endorphins.  
  
Dean kisses the side of his turned face, under his eye. Sam turns his neck back because he wants to kiss his brother, but Dean’s pulled away. Sam’s too out of it to lean up, so he just lays there as his heartrate drops, feeling safe beneath Dean with his cock tucked in his heat.  
  
\--  
  
Dean’s gone the next morning. Sam puts his clothes back on and scowls at the broken coffee maker when no amount of unplugging it and flipping the switch will get it to work.  
  
There’s a headache behind his eyes, aches in his muscles. Dean left bruises on him, and each hurts like a fresh wound. Sam feels hungover and gauzy, and every second a glimpse of last night slides through his mind and he winces.  
  
“Things with your brother didn’t go so well?” Jess asks when he’s back in her sunlight, her rose smell. Sam clears his throat, licks his lips and buries his face deeper in her hair.  
  
“Couldn’t fix anything between us,” he says. “Just made it worse. I...” He lets the sentence hang. He feels disgusting; a pool of black stringing like oil over Jess’ skin. He hasn’t showered; Dean’s scent is all over him, in between them. A possessive layer cushioning him from Jess and the world.  
  
Sam can feel him _everywhere_. Wonders how Jess can’t know, can stand to still hold him when Dean’s _right there_.  
  
He’s in Dean’s gravity again. He’d almost made it through the atmosphere. Almost broke out and away from that sick, dark feeling. It’s ensnared him once more. Got him tight the way it had years ago; laying awake and listening to Dean masturbate, laying awake and masturbating. Laying awake and gross in his come bathing his boxers, a freak since thoughts of his brother and not normal girls had been what wrecked him.  
  
\--  
  
“Oh my God,” is all Sam can say when he goes into _La Baguette_ first thing in the morning and finds his brother behind the counter.  
  
“Hiya, Sammy!” Dean smiles, wide and white. Sam looks at his ridiculous green apron, blinking.  
  
A sudden force at his back makes him trip forward. “Move it giraffe!” Sam regains his stance and pushes a glare at Maxson as he cuts in front of him.  
  
“Hey!” Dean barks. “Watch the way you talk to my brother.”  
  
Maxson straightens up at Dean’s voice and Sam amps up the power of his glower when the other alpha’s scent grows loud and interested.  
  
“Yeah right he’s your brother,” Maxson scoffs, sidling up to the counter. “You’re actually half-decent looking.”  
  
“Bet your head’d look half-decent mounted on a pike.”  
  
Sam smiles as Maxson’s eyebrows fling up in shock.  
  
“You got money to spend here or not,” Dean says.  
  
Maxson looks between him and Sam hatefully and grumbles that he wants a Parisian Pastrami sandwich, toasted, thanks.  
  
Once he’s out of the shop, Sam comes to the counter. “That was fun to watch, but seriously, what are you doing?”  
  
“I’m,” Dean leans in, his cake-scented breath in Sam’s face, “sellin’ sweet things.” Sam breathes in his air, chest tightening. “You wanna buy somethin’ sweet, Sammy?”  
  
“D-don’t do that, Dean,” Sam whispers, cutting his eyes away from Dean’s thick pink lips and the wings of his eyelashes, “someone could see me with you, and.”  
  
Dean’s leaning so far over the counter he’s practically _on_ it. Sam can see the slope of his back over his shoulder, inches of bright skin revealed by his ridden-up shirt.  
  
“Please,” Sam says, his mouth ghosting on Dean’s, closer. Ever closer.  
  
Sam’s not fucking _used_ to this.  
  
“All right.” Dean reels himself back and the knot he put in Sam’s groin untangles.  
  
“Just trying to earn an honest livin’, Sam,” Dean says, diddling with the cash register. “I’m glad you come here and not that place across the street; I heard it’s,” Dean mimes gagging.  
  
“That’s what I mean, Dean. Lots of my friends come here. So you can’t be feeling me up over the counter.”  
  
“Whatever. You wanted something?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You came in here, must mean you wanna buy somethin’. We got a special on macarons. Buy two get one free.”  
  
“Oh, right.” Sam scratches the back of his neck. “Yeah, I’ll have a strawberry tiramisu, three raspberry macarons and a mango dome.”  
  
“You don’t even like mango.” Dean looks over his face and then smiles quickly, looking down. “But it’s not for you.”  
  
Sam doesn’t know what to say. Jess is huge on sweets, and he always gets her some on Mondays. He can’t _not_ , just because his brother decided to work here.  
  
“Well, that’s 26 dollars and 15 cents.”  
  
Sam slides the money over and leaves as soon as the box is in his hands.  
  
\--  
  
“Oh!” Jess moans. Her hands fly to Sam’s head and sift deep in his air as he drives deeper into her. “God—Sam!” She jerks like she’s been shocked under him and he opens his mouth to pant. “I love you baby. I, _ah_!”  
  
He sucks her damp neck before reaching up to grab the headboard for more leverage. He bangs into her so hard they both have to take a moment. “Mhn,” he growls, looking down at her. He adjusts their bodies and his hands and slams into her again, making the breath fly from her lungs.  
  
He’s never been rough before with her.  
  
There’s nothing like this.  
  
\--  
  
“Fuck me, fuck me, oh fuck me,” Dean’s breathing. He’s moving into each one of Sam’s thrusts, slick sounds rhythmic.  
  
Sam hangs himself over Dean’s back, his knees burning in the rug, jeans around his ankles and shirt hitched up his back because they weren’t supposed to do this.  
  
Covered in sweat and burning in his face, Sam pounds away with Dean’s jacket between his teeth.  
  
“Harder, Sam.”  
  
Sam does it harder. Until it breaks him apart.  
  
He can’t handle this.  
  
\--  
  
“I heard you.”  
  
Sam looks up from his spread of papers, pencil on the loop of a Y.  
  
Dean’s sitting on the table, eating trail mix with his legs spread too wide.  
  
Dean’s smiling.  
  
“Heard what?” Sam looks back down to finish the sentence.  
  
“You jerking off when we were younger.”  
  
Cold spills through Sam even as heat fills his head. He keeps looking down, all the words in the textbook smearing into a bunch of black and white.  
  
“Dean,” his brother mimics in a high, punched-out voice. Sam turns impossibly colder, impossibly hotter. “ _Ah_ , Dean.” He makes his voice crack and the last vowels slide into a lower register, like when Sam’s young voice used to do that, when he came.  
  
“You know, at the time,” Dean continues normally, inexorably, “it wasn’t like—it wasn’t that weird. You go with what you know, I get it. I did it too. Didn’t think about you, though. Definitely didn’t do it as loud as you; woulda made things awkward.”  
  
“Dean, the agreement was that you could be here only if you were quiet.”  
  
“I just don’t get it, man. You finally get what you want and it’s like you can barely function.”  
  
“Well,” Sam says, terse, “it would be a lot different if I hadn’t already mated somebody by the time you decided you wanted to be with me.”  
  
“I’m not _with_ you. And I didn’t decide anything. This is a circumstantial...” Crunch, crunch, crunch of Dean chewing. “Adventure,” he finishes with his mouth still full of pretzel mush.  
  
Sam breathes out. “Right.” He turns a page in his textbook and doesn’t look at Dean anymore.  
  
There’s nothing for him there. Only occasional sex and the privilege to see Dean’s face when he comes, to kiss his lips and touch his skin. Only that, because Dean isn’t coated in Sam’s oil slick blackness, doesn’t feel the sick spread through him like dirty water through a shiny clean drain.  
  
Doesn’t feel how it clogs.  
  
\--  
  
“I called Dad again,” Dean says one night, another night Sam had to make his lips shape I’m staying with Dean tonight, another night he had to watch Jess smile and say great, you know, Sam, I think having Dean back has been good for you, like she can’t see him crumbling down the hill.  
  
He hates that she doesn’t. Hates that she won’t be able to stop him, because Sam needs someone to stop him, desperately.  
  
“Last good number I got, and I call it today and get _this number is no longer in service_.” Dean clenches his fists and squirms like he’s trying to escape stabbing knives.  
  
Sam can picture them running through.  
  
“It’s just a waste,” Dean laughs, the creaky laugh Brady gets after a few hits and bad jokes. “That’s all I can think. Twenty years of eating that shit sandwich, hoping for the payoff, and he just drops me.”  
  
 _What did you expect_? Sam almost says, but Dean hasn’t had a lifetime of disappointment involving their father. Dean’s never so much as given the man a dirty look.  
  
Sam feels sour when he knows that’s the only reason Dean’s here. He should be thankful for it, but he wonders: if Dad hadn’t left, would he have ever seen Dean again? Would he reach thirty with no birthday call because Dean stopped those years ago, and Sam might call him when he made partner, birth of his first kid, something huge like that and it’d go straight to voicemail and he’d live the rest of his life not knowing when, how, if Dean died.  
  
“That’s sick, Sam,” Dean had said when Sam was eighteen and stupid enough to tell him how messed up he was. Hissed, “ _Sick_ ,” again like it didn’t penetrate deep enough the first time.  
  
Of course it was, is. Sam’s never denied that.  
  
He can still hear that hiss in his head.  
  
“Least I still got you,” Dean says in the dark. Sam peels his eyes from the ceiling and turns his head to Dean laying soldier-straight next to him. Dean looks at him too, lashes falling slow and a smile stretching his pink lips. “Don’t I, Sammy?”  
  
Sam shivers. He moves so he can capture Dean’s lips, catching butterfly softness with his mouth. He slides onto Dean, pressing the thump of their heartbeats together.  
  
“Let me,” he says into Dean’s jaw, stubble there as grainy as the noise from the TV buzzing in the peripheral of Sam’s vision.  
  
Sam’s not sure what he wants Dean to let him do, not exactly. He sucks at Dean’s neck while he thinks about it, idly pulsing his hips into Dean’s. They’re both wearing sweats with Stanford lining the leg—Sam gave him a pair and some other clothes for reasons he hasn’t devoted effort into wondering about.  
  
They sort of drape over Dean’s feet, which is pretty funny. They’re too tight in the hip, which is pretty hot. Clothes sharing is a form of scent marking, which is pretty guilty.  
  
“Fuckin’ droolin’ on me,” Dean grunts.  
  
Sam lets his mouthful of flesh go and spreads his scent on Dean’s cheeks with his own.  
  
A primitive urge has him on a hook. He feels stupidly like just getting them naked and rubbing all over Dean, biting him—he wonders what the slide of his teeth into Dean’s joining spots would feel like. Wouldn’t go so easy as Jess’ skin had, there’d be resistance, as if Dean’s neck knew the exact shape of his brother’s bite and so his skin was especially formed to not catch a claim from him.  
  
A force blows him back.  
  
He’s on his knees then, breathing hard, and Dean’s scrabbling to sit up, hand tight over his neck.  
  
“Sorry,” he says immediately as sound filters back in. He must’ve put his teeth there, didn’t bite (he would know if he had), fuck, shit _he must’ve put his teeth over_ —  
  
“Fuck,” Dean says, and goes into the bathroom.  
  
Sam furiously wipes his bangs out of his eyes with one hand and presses the heel of his other into his nagging cock.  
  
\--  
  
Finals pass. Sam passes, with marks that make Jess flare her eyes in exasperation and ask why he’s wasting time at Stanford when he could be launching rockets into starry space and running on the moon.  
  
 _I just wanna do something normal_ , Sam thinks. And then he thinks being a lawyer isn’t exactly common, at least, not as common as construction or food service or Walmart greeters. Sam doesn’t even exactly _want_ to be an attorney; at times it feels more like a profession he picked out of a hat than something that could warrant passionate phrases like “I knew since junior high I wanted to be in law”, or “it’s always been my dream job.”  
  
Sam supposes it won’t make him happy, but in lieu of, he doesn’t know what could.  
  
“Why don’t you just get an apartment?”  
  
“Nah,” Dean says.  
  
“So you’re going to live out of a hotel the rest of your life?”  
  
“It’s familiar.”  
  
Sam shakes his head and opens the window. He leans his upper body out and takes a breath of fresh air that’s not much cooler than inside the room. Sweat jumps off the tip of his nose and dies on the asphalt thirty feet down.  
  
“We should go somewhere.”  
  
Dean grunts an acknowledgement. Sam reels himself back into the building and looks at his brother.  
  
Dean’s sitting on the floor with his back to the end of the bed, bare legs stretched out in front of him. He’s just staring ahead, sitting in his own soup.  
  
“What’s wrong with you? Lately you’ve been just.” Sam gestures vaguely and Dean gestures back, squeezing his hands into fists then splaying his fingers.  
  
“I’m great,” he says flatly.  
  
Sam looks at him, unsure of what to say. Dean’s been like this the past week or so, spends hours like dollar bills tuning out his own existence.  
  
And of course he’s started this in when Sam actually has free time to share with him.  
  
 _Dad call_? Sam had asked.  
  
 _No_. Dean’s lips had curled ugly when he said that, and his scent had blown up into a big angry cloud of wasps.  
  
He had tried Dean’s brand of humor with a time of the month joke then. Dean had kept on looking through.  
  
“Wanna have sex?” Sam blurts now in the hazy air. The humidity’s sucked the moisture from his throat and his words crack a desert between them.  
  
Dean hold up an agreeable finger, but then folds it dismissively. “Raincheck.” Dean tips his head back, showing his glistening throat. “Just go out, do whatever, without me.”  
  
“Maybe—”  
  
“Sam, listen, you’re botherin’ me. You smell like fuckin’ Chinese food and sweat and you’re botherin’ me. Take those puppy-eyes somewhere else please.”  
  
“All right,” Sam says, barely keeping his feet from stamping to the door. “Guess I’ll see you tomorrow?”  
  
“Sure thing,” Dean says while Sam’s in the process of closing the door; the jamb eats most of the sound.  
  
Sam leaves the motel, warm wind streaming through his hair.  
  
Jess takes his mind off Dean. Sam chews him away in the crunch of popcorn and sugary soda on his tastebuds, Jessica’s head warming his shoulder while they watch _War of the Worlds_.  
  
Sam wakes up the next morning with only his brother’s face behind his eyes, and it’s so obsessive that when Jess puts her head under the sheet to tease his morning wood, and he’s half-asleep still, he stupidly wraps his fingers in her hair and shoves all of himself into her throat, groaning with relief and _Dean_.  
  
She chokes and she’s gone.  
  
Sam only truly realizes it’s not Dean when he looks to see her walking into the bathroom.  
  
“Sorry,” he calls out. “I was basically asleep, you know.”  
  
Did he say Dean? Did he _scream_ it?  
  
In case, “I’m still kinda drunk,” he says, louder to penetrate the door she’s shut on his voice.  
  
“On what? Mr. Pibb?” She doesn’t sound like she just heard him moan his brother’s name.  
  
“I guess.” He smoothes a hand over his face and growls at his own stupidity.  
  
He tucks himself back into his shorts and gets up, eyes finding his jeans.  
  
“So, I’m, uh, gonna go see how Dean’s doing,” he says in the same raised tone to the closed door. “I think he’s been pretty depressed, about Dad or whatever. I better go check on him.”  
  
He comes up to the door and knocks. “Are you okay? I’m really sorry that, um, I did that.”  
  
“Yeah, it’s okay. It’s not a huge deal. I’m gonna shower. When are you gonna be back?”  
  
“I’ll just be gone a couple hours. Bye, babe.”  
  
“Tell Dean I said hi and to get better!”  
  
\--  
  
“I’m telling you, he checked out last night!”  
  
“No, that can’t be right. Can you please check again? Maybe he got a different room?”  
  
“Look, kid, the only Dean Winchester I know about walked outta here last night. Tall, leather jacket, yeah I know exactly who you’re talking about. He ain’t here.”  
  
“Did he say anything? Where he was going? Did he leave some kind of note, or, or a message, _something_ —”  
  
“Not a word. Went and drove off in that gas guzzlin’ hunk of metal tryin’ to pass as a classic car.”  
  
“Nothing?”  
  
“Nothin’.”  
  
“All right. Excuse me.”  
  
Sam steps into the fresh air and his thumbpad glides over Dean’s number. He presses his cell to his ear and leans against the building.  
  
He shuts his eyes as the phone rings twice, three times.  
  
“Pick up, Dean. Pick up, damn it, pick up, pick up.”  
  
“This is Dean Winchester, if—”  
  
“Dean!”  
  
“—you have a problem, you know what to do.”  
  
 _Beep_.  
  
Sam stays silent a few seconds, feeling stupid. “Dean,” he whispers at last. “Dean, _call me_. If this is about a hunt, or Dad, or you and whatever’s been going on, I gotta know. Just. Please call, man. Get back to me. I.” Sam swallows around the wad of sap in his throat he knows Dean won’t appreciate. “I’m worried.”  
  
Sam drops his phone from his ear slowly, looking through the store opposite the motel and the people walking there.  
  
He looks back at the parking lot, insanely sure the manager must’ve made a mistake, and Jesus, the Impala is _right there_ —  
  
Sam takes a step forward and catches sight of the white SS on the grille.  
  
He slumps back into place, and can almost hear Dean chewing him out about the dumb mistake.  
  
 _It’s not even the same black_!  
  
Sam drinks that night. Fun little shots that look a little stranger each round, and after the seventh he starts thinking that maybe Dean left him on purpose. Just to mess with him. Just for payback.  
  
Jessica frowns. “Dean doesn’t seem like he’d do that.”  
  
Sam’s vision doubles, and he spends a moment trying to pick which Jess to look at. “You don’t know him. Not like, like me. He’s my brother.”  
  
“I know,” she says gently. “If he left, it must’ve been important.”  
  
“The only important things he has are Dad, and,” Sam hiccups, “me. This is, this is... I leave them, Dad leaves him, and now he’s trying to leave me. You get it?”  
  
“I wouldn’t say _trying_.” Jess looks apologetic even as she says, “He kinda already left, Sam.”  
  
“So?” He slams his little drink down and most of the puke-colored stuff slops onto the counter.  
  
Jessica starts, then rests a hand on his arm. “Maybe try calling again?”  
  
And he’s too drunk to put in words how he called Dean right before they got here, only to hear _this number is no longer in service_ under the roar of busy college students and the tinny music from Luis’ Walkman.  
  
He’s not too drunk to get the bartender’s attention and ask for a bottle and a glass.  
  
\--  
  
Sam stays in his big Stanford bubble, all the while almost-yearning to leave it all and hunt down his brother, because, he knows, that’d be the right thing to do. Selfish either way; he stays and eats Jess’ baked cookies and forgets about Dean or he leaves her behind (maybe forever), leaves behind years of effort and the reason he left his family in the first place, to chase down a Dean that maybe doesn’t even want to be found.  
  
Time seems to take the choice away. Jess flips the calendar to September’s wild horses and Sam has notes to take and papers to write and joints to decline. “Have it your way,” Brady says, blowing a plume of smoke his way. It billows up in Brady’s face strangely; for a few seconds his red-streaked eyes are two black asteroids burning through the blue cloud.  
  
Sam coughs and wonders about contact highs.  
  
He has an interview on Monday. He has the rest of his life.  
  
“I don’t know what happened,” Sam mutters to his reflection. He pulls the skin on his chin taut and runs the razor over the soft hairs there, “but I gotta let you go, Dean.”  
  
He scrapes a minute. Sighs. “Jess and I are engaged,” he admits. He wonders if he could say that with Dean actually standing in front of him instead of the shaggy-haired, lanky, _sad_ son-of-a-bitch staring back.  
  
He puts the razor down and hangs his head. “Couldn’t you have at least left a damn note?”  
  
 _You were the selfish one, goddamn it, it was you_ , not _me. I’m trying to make a life for myself. I don’t have to look for you because you left me_.  
  
 _“Make me stay, Sammy. Or I’m gone tomorrow and I’m not coming back.”_


	2. Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> male omega parents are called 'om' how original.

Sam opens his eyes. They’re met with dawn light. He turns onto his side, yawning with a mouth stale from liquor. Oh yeah, it’s the hard stuff nowadays that gets him an easy life. He’s sure he reeks of the shit, his clients must sniff it on him. Jess complains at least three times a day about his _problem_ , asks how the hell he keeps his job.  
  
Because I’m too good, Sam says when he’s sober.  
  
Because I’ve been helping the managing partner evade her taxes for the past two years, Sam says when he’s drunk, and Jess mimes shock but never believes him, because Sam may be an alcoholic, but he’s a Good Man in her eyes.  
  
And it’s a shame she’s always seen him that way, because being a Good Man means that he’s not a Suspicious Man, so he’d never do a thing like sneak into his own house at 1:30 Wednesday afternoon and peek around the corner to watch her tits bounce as she enthusiastically rides the neighbor’s (fucking _Kirk_ ) dick on the kitchen floor.  
  
Sam goes back to work and doesn’t ever tell her he knows.  
  
But it’s not surprising. He’s not mad or sad or much of anything. Their marriage used to burn, not bright, never bright after _Dean_ , but steady and good. Now the wick’s drowning in its own wax and Sam’s pretty content to watch it extinguish itself, because it’s his fault anyway isn’t it?  
  
He can’t tell Jess the reason he drinks is to feel closer to the brother that left him high and dry six years ago, because alcoholism is a family activity, like hunting and incest.  
  
Not like Sam wears his own halo too tight either; he’s the very definition of a man with a high-stress job, and those omega strip joints lining the city help him untwist. Sometimes there’ll be men who look like Dean shaking their asses and dropping their clothes onstage, and Sam could almost believe Dean left him to dance his nights away at the _Ares_.  
  
He gets disdainful looks when he’s in there. His mated scent doesn’t engender much love with the call girls either. He tries that whole thing four times (two with the same green-eyed girl) before he realizes they’re more grief and money than they’re worth; he’s sick of scouring his skin to get their scent off before he goes home so Jess won’t suspect.  
  
Worst still, he thinks she wouldn’t care if she did know, maybe because she’s cheating on him anyway or because things are just that bad.  
  
He’s in court Wednesday and Thursday. Friday morning, he goes into work and gets an unpleasant phonecall from his client because, even Sam can admit, things aren’t looking so good for them.  
  
Deknis snaps at him, and Sam just doesn’t need it today. He lets him continue in his cocaine-fast vitriol, and when it peters out into an esoteric tangent Sam says, “Goodbye, Deknis,” shortly and hangs up.  
  
He shakes his head and calls it an early day. Really, he should’ve known when he accidentally spilled his morning coffee that the day was destined to be shit from the start.  
  
He considers going home and watching Jess fuck the neighbor and maybe announcing himself this time, _I’m really hurt, honey_ , but that’s not exactly the cap he wants for his morning. Not yet.  
  
He starts thinking of calling Brady to go to the bar, and that’s insane and stupid and sad, because Brady died last year.  
  
Sam still has his cell number in his contacts and can’t ever see himself letting him go enough to delete it, because it’s fucking stupid to die in a cigarette fire.  
  
“That’s not what happened,” Sam told Jess tearfully as Brady’s friends said their eulogies, his own crumpled up in his lap. “Jess, that’s not what happened.”  
  
That moment was as close as he ever got to telling her the truth.  
  
Sam decides to try the eatery two blocks away on recommendation from his colleagues, because the only thing up there with strippers are fish and chips.  
  
He’s impressed just walking through the door. It’s styled like the inside of an old sea vessel, rustic and charming. The salt and pepper shakers are shaped like anchors, for Christ’s sake. It doesn’t look too busy, the artifacts on the wall look genuine, and the table Sam gets is so clean he can almost see himself.  
  
He tucks his briefcase away and orders the special.  
  
How he meets Dean again isn’t special by any means.  
  
Years down the line Sam’ll feel sick about how he could’ve just finished his meal and left, because the clam chowder was good but Sam likes the vegetarian place on 3rd street better. If he’d never gone into that place anyway. If he hadn’t ordered that soda which, combined with his four cups of coffee that morning, made his bladder scream before he could even finish off his last spoonful of soup.  
  
The place really filled up while Sam was eating, and he has to bite back snarls at the sheer amount of people who seem to want him to piss his four-hundred dollar slacks.  
  
The bathrooms are only separated by male and female, which for a split second makes Janice Morrison’s face flash through his mind’s eye; an omega woman that sued her workplace for these types of hippy dippy conjoined bathrooms that promote harassment, rape, and “the unwanted assimilation of A and O into beta culture.”  
  
 _Unbiblical_! she had screeched, and Sam hears that unpleasant sound as he frantically unzips and then just pours himself out.  
  
The urinals are also shaped like anchors, Sam notices. Salad bar or not, Sam’s definitely passing along the name of this place.  
  
“Damn, you trying to put out a fire or somethin’?” a low voice remarks.  
  
Sam frowns, shakes three times and decides that the voice must’ve come from inside his head, or the guy behind him is anyone else than who he sounds like.  
  
Anyone else regards him evenly when Sam finally can’t bear not looking and turns to see.  
  
In an instant, he feels twenty-one again, and the bathroom smells like a musty Stanford library and the cookies Jess would make so the smell infiltrated the whole building, the ones that Sam had forgotten about after college, and Jess had too.  
  
Tiles and stalls seem to melt around Dean, into him, like he’s a glitch in time.  
  
“Dean,” Sam says, and all he can feel is hurt; his Dean-scab has been ripped off and it’s bleeding down his body. _DEAN_ he screams inside his skin.  
  
He’s rehearsed what’d he say if he ever heard from Dean again, and in the absence of reason his mouth defaults to that, “Christ, Dean, what happened?”  
  
Dean clicks his tongue. “Long story. How are you, man?” he moves and hugs Sam like six years was just yesterday.  
  
Sam can’t move his arms.  
  
“God, it’s good to see you.” Dean rubs their cheeks chastely and holds his shoulders to look Sam up and down. “That lawyer thing worked out, huh? You finally eating decent food too?”  
  
Sam’s nostrils flare, and then his world becomes unbearably brittle.  
  
He wordlessly removes himself from Dean’s tainted orbit and the bathroom.  
  
“Dude, wait up! I’ll be out in a minute; ‘m waiting for my son to hurry up and get outta there—”  
  
Sam immerses himself in the thin crowd, wishing he could shut off his ears because a kid too? Mated with a kid, kid _s_? Oh God, oh no no _no_.  
  
“Jesus,” Sam gasps, tripping out of the shop into the fresh air. He yanks his tie off and throws it on the ground then covers his fanged mouth and shuts his red-stained eyes. He leans back against the bricks and tries to calm down because he’s making an incident with the amount of shockedscent punching from his pores.  
  
“Sam, c’mon. What’re you doing?”  
  
Like a child, Sam wishes the world would just stop existing for a few hours or forever.  
  
“You sick or somethin’?” Dean grabs his wrists and tries to lift them away from his face. “Sam.” He digs his nails into the spaces between Sam’s fingers, playing dirty like _always_ , and Sam’s palms slide away.  
  
Dean’s eyes flare in surprise at the savagery. Sam almost snarls at him, but even wolfed out he can’t muster up that kind of rage at Dean. There’s only the torn open wound chilling his insides and the _why_.  
  
“You said you weren’t gonna leave,” Sam gasps it out. “So what, what was it? Dad? A hunt? The A whose scent is all over you? Was it like that? You cheat on him, you get me to cheat on Jess, so we can both end up in hell together?”  
  
“You don’t really believe that. It wasn’t like that, had nothing to do with it.”  
  
“It might not, but I can’t believe anything you say. I already went down that road and look where it got me.”  
  
“In a nice suit driving a fancy-ass car?” Dean growls, and gestures to Sam’s Mercedes. He grabs Sam’s hand and wags it. “Married. Doesn’t look like it ruined your life did it Sammy? Looks like you kept keepin’ on pretty damn well.”  
  
“Screw you Dean. You have no clue. What’s it’s been like for me these past few years...” Sam’s voice breaks and he shakes his head. He reaches inside his jacket for his flask and throws it in Dean’s chest. “That look like I’m just fine?”  
  
He shoves Dean away and starts walking.  
  
“Sam, I. Sam, c’mon. You know it doesn’t have to be like this!”  
  
“Yeah, it didn’t,” Sam shoots back, and almost runs into someone coming out of the store.  
  
When he looks, he recognizes the guy as an employee. He’s holding the briefcase Sam forgot all about. “Thought you wouldn’t wanna lose this,” he drawls, and offers it to Sam.  
  
Sam takes it slowly, staring down at the shorter man. Blue eyes stare right back, before they point behind Sam. “You know Dean?”  
  
“No,” Sam says shortly, and goes to move around him.  
  
He’s stopped short by a strong grip. “Lotta shovin’ for somebody that you don’t know, isn’t it?”  
  
Dean’s suddenly by his side. “Benny, let go of him.”  
  
“Who is he?”  
  
“Damn it, he’s my brother. Now let him go.”  
  
Benny’s grip eases and then breaks. “All right.”  
  
The uneasy feeling compounds in Sam’s gut, and the unbearable truth needles in his brain against his will.  
  
Benny smells overwhelmingly like Dean.  
  
Sam can only stare at him, stuck in the twilight zone. He needs to leave. He just needs to unstick himself from this nightmare and go home to normal, adulterous Jessica and drink until he feels sane again.  
  
“You never told me you had a brother,” Benny says in an unaccusing way to Dean.  
  
“I never told you about the rash I had in high school either,” Dean chuckles.  
  
“Guess I’m on that level then, huh, Dean?” Sam snaps.  
  
Benny’s eyes waver his way, ever blue, ever wary. He puts out his hand, “Benny Lafitte.”  
  
Sam finally places the soft drawl as Cajun.  
  
“Sam Winchester.”  
  
Sam shakes it like a lawyer: brief and hard. The disquiet in Benny’s eyes deepens. There’s not real fear there, not like Sam thinks he’d like there to be. There’s something sturdy and unshakable about the man in front of him which puts Sam’s hackles right up.  
  
Benny chuckles. “Yeah, no doubt. Lil’ James looks just like you. Genes must’ve skipped.”  
  
“James?”  
  
“Your nephew?” Benny looks between Sam and Dean. “Guess you guys haven’t been in touch a long while, huh.”  
  
Dean clears his throat.  
  
“There’s a lot we need to get caught up on,” Sam covers. He looks at his watch, hits his briefcase against his leg. “Guess we gotta put it off. I’m due in court at two.” _Due for a bottle of 190-proof_.  
  
“Oh, sure thing,” Benny says, and the look in his eyes is no more at ease. “All three of us talk, yeah? Over some rice and gravy when you’re not busy.”  
  
“Sure, sure.” Never, never.  
  
Sam looks at Dean a last time. His face is tense and uncomfortable. He looks back at Sam almost desperately, and it’s obvious there’s a hundred things he wants to say that he won’t.  
  
Sam turns his head and imagines the swivel of colors erasing Dean forever.  
  
He crosses to his car, sore with a thousand blows and numb all the same.  
  
He’s halfway in the vehicle when a screeching, falsetto voice erupts, “I wanna say hi! I wanna say hi!”  
  
Sam looks back to see a small child being restrained by Dean’s arm. The boy’s face lights up when he sees Sam looking and he fights ever harder to run over. “Hi Uncle Sam! My name’s James! Where’re you goin’? Can you come over to our house tonight please? It’ll be fun!”  
  
Sam swallows. He gets in the car but doesn’t close the door, so he can have a view of the kid not made any bit unclear by the window.  
  
“Do you like video games?” James calls, sounding less confident now at Sam’s lack of response. “Or pie? Daddy makes the best pies for me and Om. He can make you one?” James looks up at Benny for confirmation.  
  
“I’ll come over,” Sam says, and James darts his eyes back to him and smiles hugely. He’s missing a couple front teeth and his dimples put soft shadows in his cheeks. “What’s the address?”  
  
James rattles it off, and Sam uses part of his brain to commit it to memory, the other parts busy doing math, adding up the dates and years and how much more of his heart he has left to rip out, because this betrayal could take the last of it.  
  
There’s little doubt the boy rambling on now about different pie fillings is his son.  
  
\--  
  
Son.  
  
“Son,” Sam says at six o’clock, in the bathroom shaving the shadow on his cheeks the smoothest he’s ever bothered to in years.  
  
There’s a little ball of elation in his chest that glows with the word. There’s a huge spike in his heart that plows deeper. There’s the pending upheaval of his whole fucking existence.  
  
There’s rage that Sam doesn’t know what to do with. Dean keeping his son from him, running off as soon as he knew, getting the kid to call someone else daddy. Six goddamn years Sam’s missed out on with the kid who is him made over. Did Dean just expect him to see James and not know?  
  
Sam nicks himself at the hinge of his jaw and swears. He rinses off, pats dry and puts a tissue to the thankfully small cut, then pokes his head out of the bathroom. He considers telling Jess an excuse, but that might be even more suspicious than simply walking out the door.  
  
There’s a cut-out in the wall that lets him see her sitting on the couch, watching _War of the Worlds_. If she asks, he’ll give her the old social function excuse, which this time is calling for casual dress.  
  
With his job, Sam spends more time in a suit than not, so it’s freeing to just put on jeans and a shirt and try to make himself look as open and friendly as possible. He doesn’t want his son to think he’s just a corporate slave.  
  
Besides, he needs the cool uncle factor in play.  
  
For a little while.  
  
When the cut finally ceases bleeding, Sam rubs his aftershave lotion in, makes his hair look as unprofessional as possible, grabs his keys and beats feet out of the house.  
  
Jess doesn’t say a damn word.  
  
The address James told him takes him to a long dirt road. Sam’s GPS pipes up that he’s on his own, but the house is easy to find, it being one of just a couple houses laid down along the way.  
  
Sam checks his watch, and feels a weird, painful sense of loss. Perhaps the whole three years Sam’s lived here, Dean’s only been twenty minutes away.  
  
The feeling darkens—there’s no way this was coincidence. Remembering Dean’s lack of surprise at meeting him again, it’s certain that he knew Sam lived nearby.  
  
 _God, it’s good to see you_ , he hears Dean say. Now that he _knows_ , Dean’s face melts to just his grin, and it stays in Sam’s mind’s eye all the way up to the doorstep.  
  
Dean answers the door.  
  
They don’t get a chance to say anything to each other because there’s an excited voice in the background screaming, “Is that Uncle Sam?” And then a little body flies through the bow of Dean’s legs to wrap around Sam’s.  
  
“Hey!” Sam laughs, and heaves him up in his arms.  
  
“Daddy! Sam’s here! You need to make a pie!” James picks at Sam’s hair. “What kind do you want?”  
  
“How about apple?” Sam looks between his own eyes reflected back, picking out the barest smidgeons of Dean that lay in the boy’s elfish ears and long eyelashes.  
  
Sam switches his eyes to Dean pointedly, whose jaw clenches even as his skin loses color. He retreats back into the house and Sam follows.  
  
He looks around the house and grudgingly decides it’s tastefully traditional, and moreover, it’s the best smelling house Sam’s been in.  
  
“Good, huh?” James wraps his arm around his neck. Sam closes his eyes and smiles. “We had chicken for dinner.”  
  
Sam looks at him. “You had dinner without me?”  
  
“I told them to wait!” James protests. “But isn’t pie better than dinner?”  
  
“That’s what I say,” Dean says as they step in the kitchen.  
  
Benny’s there, rolling out dough.  
  
“Apple pie, Daddy,” James tells him.  
  
“Uncle Sam wants apple pie,” Benny intones, flicking his eyes up from his dough.  
  
Sam works up a smile, “Sounds great.”  
  
He sits at the table with James in his lap. He doesn’t want to let him go on an instinctive level. His civilized mind has no idea how to be a father or what that even means, but the alpha side has recognized his offspring.  
  
He feels a little gauzy-headed from all the cataclysmic shifts taking place in his hormones and brain.  
  
James picks up one of his hands and puts it palm-up on the table, lays his own hand inside. Besides the different dimensions, Sam notices even their hands look alike; fingers long and thin rather than Dean’s short and thick. Skintone is a near match too.  
  
Dean sits with them, expression forever on the cusp of words. Sam skates his eyes over him, his neck. He can remember a lifetime ago when his joining spots were vibrant and enticing to Sam’s teeth, not pale and unsexual like they are now.  
  
Dean clears his throat, “How’s Jessica? You got kids now, right?”  
  
“She’s good, and no.”  
  
Dean’s eyes seem to light up with hope, “Yeah, you’re probably too busy.”  
  
“That’s not it.” Though Sam supposes it’s not irrelevant.  
  
“Who’s Jessica?” James asks, tipping his head up to look at Sam. “Your mate?”  
  
“Yeah.” Sam remembers when that word used to mean so much more and _Jesus_ , he’d forgotten how much there is to ache over when he’s sober.  
  
Dean says he’ll get him a beer like he’s picked up on his thoughts.  
  
Sam watches him and Benny in the kitchen, how Dean laughs at something Benny says, his eyes crinkling and fond.  
  
The prickling of jealousy is unexpected, but Dean has been his fixation for the greater part of his life, for better, for worse; Sam’s mated to him in all but bite.  
  
Dean hands him a 12oz, and Sam makes a mental note to have only the one tonight. He’s not about to follow in his father’s bootprints, though he’s not an angry drunk. Just a desperate one.  
  
He’s barely put the neck to his lips when James jumps out of his lap and jabbers something about video games and starts trying to drag him out of his chair.  
  
The XBox and large TV look out of place with the rest of the decor, but it pleases Sam nonetheless. It’s obviously something James is interested in, judging by the amount he’s talking.  
  
“Are you in school yet?” Sam interrupts a seemingly endless monologue about a nature game called _Viva Piñata_ , though the game loading on the start screen has guns.  
  
James puts a controller in his hands. “Yep. First grade.”  
  
“Are you doing well?”  
  
“Yep.”  
  
“Your... Dad,” Sam winces, “works at the restaurant, right? What—”  
  
“He owns it! He helped build it and everything. And he makes really good food there.”  
  
“Mm-hm. So what does Om do? Does he work?”  
  
Lights from the TV flash white and red over James’ face, his furrowed eyebrows. “...Sometimes.”  
  
“Sometimes?”  
  
“Sometimes he leaves for a few days. If Dad’s working late he has Elizabeth watch me.” James shifts. “I don’t think I should be talking about this. Press X!”  
  
Sam looks down to find the button, a hard cold ball in his gut. If he thought anything would stop Dean from hunting, it’d be _having a damn kid_.  
  
Sam idly plays the game with him, a simple shooter with the screen split between their characters and the objective is apparently to just shoot whatever’s moving.  
  
Sam looks at James in the corner of his eye. He doesn’t want to grill him, but he is a wellspring—six years worth of answers, unfiltered from a child’s mouth.  
  
Dean is still in the kitchen with Benny; Sam can hear the low tones of conversation, cutlery clanging.  
  
“What about grandparents?” Sam asks. “Om and I’s dad? You know about him?”  
  
“Yeah. He’s dead. I didn’t really know him, so.” James looks at him apologetically.  
  
“Oh,” Sam says, helplessly. “H-how do I pause?”  
  
“Press the middle button.”  
  
Sam does. He puts the controller on the coffee table and his head in his hands.  
  
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to make you sad!”  
  
Sam feels a warm hand on his shoulder. He reaches to clasp it tight. “No, it’s okay. Just. I didn’t know. How did it happen?”  
  
“I don’t know. One night Om came home and he was really sad. I was really worried and kept asking him what was wrong and he got mad and yelled. Daddy took me to my room and told me that Om was upset because his dad died.” James takes a deep breath. “Then Om left the next day and didn’t come back a whole week. It was scary.”  
  
Sam nods. He reaches for his beer and puts his arm around James’ shoulders, squeezing him into his side. “Thanks for telling me, and I’m sure it was scary. I know what that feels like.”  
  
James’ face falls. “I never knew him. Just like if you hadn’t been at Daddy’s shop that day, I woulda never known you.”  
  
“Hey. _Hey_.” Sam waits for James to look at him. “That doesn’t matter, okay? We know each other now, huh?”  
  
“Yeah.” James smiles. “And you’re really nice. And awesome. Can you sleep over?”  
  
“Maybe.” Sam puts his beer back on the table and picks up his controller. “But first I gotta kick your butt at this game. Good with you?”  
  
“Good with me,” James agrees quickly. His eyes shoot to the TV as Sam unpauses his game. “Wait.”  
  
Sam chuckles. “Better pick up that controller; I wasn’t kidding.”  
  
\--  
  
The pie is fantastic, and pie isn’t even really Sam’s favorite. He can’t gripe about Benny’s cooking skills, and Dean definitely could’ve picked a worse stepdad for their son, so.  
  
Fuck, Sam can’t _hate_ him, but he does roar inside when he inquires about how the hell the pie is so good, what’s the recipe, and Benny rubs Dean’s thigh and drawls, “Jus’ a lil’ more sugar than usual, ‘s all.”  
  
Dean looks frightened at what Sam’s reaction could be and Sam’s angry at that most of all. He’s not going to make an incident in front of his son.  
  
He’s a little done with playing uncle however. James likes him, but Sam wants him to _love_ him and to stop calling the wrong man Daddy. He wants to steal him from this house, because Dean is just like Dad, putting hunts ahead of his kid.  
  
Hunts fueled by the need to kill whatever killed Dad, Sam’s sure. Winchester record repeating the same old tunes.  
  
Sam’s cleaning his plate of his third helping of apple pie, just appreciating eating at a table like a functional family, when James clangs his fork down. “Can Sam stay the night?”  
  
“Well I’m sure Sam has work tomorrow,” Benny says mildly, and on his left Dean looks like he’s having an existential crisis.  
  
“I don’t actually,” Sam says. Just boring documents he has to revise, but that can wait till next week or never.  
  
James shows his dimples. “Pleaseeee?”  
  
“Okay,” Dean says abruptly.  
  
They all look at him.  
  
Benny tries to get eye-contact, reaching over again to squeeze Dean’s thigh, but Dean’s just looking at Sam. “Okay.”  
  
I hope you don’t think this fixes anything, Sam tries to say with just his eyes.  
  
James jumps out of his chair, “ _Yay_!”  
  
He drags Sam to the living room again. This time it’s just to watch TV, and Sam enjoys three hours of the _ThunderCats_ reboot.  
  
When the marathon is over and an infomercial replaces the animation, Sam looks over and sees, for all his enthusiasm, James sleeping folded up in the couch pillows.  
  
“Guess you didn’t want to hear all about the Nutribullet, huh?” Sam takes the remote gently and turns off the TV. In the sudden silence, he can hear the slight whistle marking each of James’ exhales.  
  
He finishes off his beer and sits there a little longer, resting his head back. It’s surreal how much his entire being has made remade over in the span of not even a day. It’s so much to process, and there’s a throb building up in Sam’s temples, a tired burn behind his eyes.  
  
It’s still the best he’s felt in six years.  
  
He only had one beer.  
  
He gets up and stretches. He moves to James’ side of the couch and slowly slides the pillows off him, “Guess I gotta get you in bed.”  
  
Judging by the quiet, he’s the last one awake. He can’t remember if sometime during the _ThunderCats_ haze if Dean or Benny told him they were going to bed, but Benny did tell him where James’ room was, and the location of the spare bedroom.  
  
“All right, up and at ‘em.” Sam gets his arms under the small boy and hefts him from the couch.  
  
Have kids always been this fragile? Sam tightens up his grip. James might as well be a forty-pound glass sculpture.  
  
Sam takes the stairs gingerly, finding himself unable to stop looking at James’ upturned face. Each moment Sam looks the vulnerability increases; his son unknowingly squeezing Sam’s heart in his little fist.  
  
Sam sheds his first tears of the night when he gets to his son’s room. He lays James on his planet-themed sheets and kneels beside the bed, covers his face with a hand.  
  
He’s missed so many moments he can never retrieve—James being born, his first steps, his first words, first day at school, first lost tooth, and he’s so _ashamed_ then. “If I’d known...”  
  
 _Goddamn it, Dean_.  
  
Sam lets out a hoarse breath. He pulls the blanket up around his son, tucks him in securely, looks at him a few more moments, then exits the room.  
  
He leaves the door open a crack, to let some light in.  
  
Being here now is the only thing he can do.  
  
The spare bedroom is larger than he expected and the bed is neatly made. Sam opens the window, wipes his face and haphazardly removes his clothes.  
  
The sheets feel like sandpaper compared to his own, or maybe it’s because he hasn’t gone to bed sober in years.  
  
He pulls the quilt up and smashes his face in the pillow. Immediately his brain dwells on the events of the day, yesterday, last year, just the kind of thing alcohol used to prevent.  
  
His own thoughts keep him awake until they fold and twist into his first dream of the night, which involves taking James on vacation to Paris, where him and Jessica went last year.  
  
Sam thinks vaguely in the dream he’s kidnapped his son, but it doesn’t cause the stress it should; not like Dean and Benny know exactly where Sam and James are, and as long as Sam keeps away from the police it should—  
  
Sam shifts, and startles awake.  
  
There’s something heavy on him. He gasps and snaps his hand towards the weight. His palm pushes at something firm before his wrist is caught and pinned to the mattress, “Stop it.”  
  
Sam stares at the darkness above him, and the voice and scent register as familiar. “ _Dean_? What the hell!”  
  
“Shut up,” Dean hisses. He frees Sam’s wrist.  
  
Sam hears a clinking noise, before light from the bedside lamp spills over the bed and Dean straddling him.  
  
“Get off of me,” Sam grits. “What the fuck are you doing in here?”  
  
“Showing you how much I missed you.” Dean leans down and catches his lips with his own.  
  
As long as he lives, Sam’ll hate himself for the livewire of hot sensation that snaps against his back before he jerks his face away, putting it toward the light. “Get away from me, Dean.”  
  
“C’mon, don’t be like that—”  
  
“Don’t be like that? Are you _serious_ right now? What are you even _doing_?” Sam looks up at him. “You lie to me, you steal my son from me, and now you’re here why? To use me some more?”  
  
Sam shoves Dean to the end of the bed and sits up. “Maybe you wanna pull that whole ‘I’m on birth control’ shit again, so you can steal another one of my kids, right? Abandon me again till I find you again in six years.”  
  
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”  
  
“I know you lied. I don’t care about your bullshit reasons.” Sam squeezes the sheets. “I don’t care about _you_ , so get the fuck out.”  
  
“Sam, you don’t mean that.”  
  
“Go back to Benny. He’s the guy you mated, remember? God knows you don’t give a shit about him either.”  
  
Dean smiles meanly. “Thought you were jealous.”  
  
“ _Jealous_?” Sam barks. “I feel _sorry_ for him. Look how you are, Dean. In here trying to fuck me. Doesn’t that say everything?”  
  
“Who said anything about fucking? I’m not a cheater like you, Sammy.”  
  
Sam’s teeth drop. He bares them at Dean. “You’re lying. Again. You just fucking kissed me.”  
  
“And that was all I was gonna give you. Believe that. A fuckin’ kiss goodbye.” Dean gets up and starts walking.  
  
Sam trembles with anger. He trembles out of bed and he trembles as he forces Dean against the wall and he trembles as he growls, “There’s no goodbye now. You have my son.”  
  
“ _My_ son,” Dean spits. “I didn’t go through all that shit to have him for him to be _yours_.”  
  
“And you’re being a real good parent right?” Sam snorts. “Hunting, Dean? Wow, you think you woulda learned from Dad that that only ends with you dead.”  
  
Dean takes a deep, shaky breath. “Don’t talk about Dad. And James doesn’t know about that.”  
  
“He knows you’re gone days at a time, Dean. That’s all he needs to know.” Sam tilts his head to lock their eyes. “What is wrong with you?”  
  
Dean glares, his mouth thinned. Sam’s breathing hard and can see the reflected red of his eyes in Dean’s, “Tomorrow,” Sam says, “you’re gonna tell Benny the truth.”  
  
“Not happening.”  
  
“You’re gonna tell both of him, you’re gonna tell James I’m not his uncle, I’m his damn _father_ , and you’re gonna tell Benny why I’m really here.”  
  
“What did I just say? Like _hell_.”  
  
Dean goes to the side to get away, and Sam hauls him back in place and pins him bodily. He bites at Dean’s neck, to the side of but so close to his joining spots. “You tell them, or I’ll _fuck_ you.”  
  
“What the—Sam?”  
  
Holding a bite of skin in his teeth, Sam grinds Dean into the wall. “I’ll fuck you right now, so hard everyone will hear, and Benny’ll smell me all over you, _in_ you, and you’ll be the freak.”  
  
“Maybe I’ll just tell him I didn’t want it,” Dean breathes.  
  
“You couldn’t even say it with a straight face.”  
  
Dean’s pulse pounds under his lips. “Well you’ve really changed. What do you want?”  
  
“What I just told you.”  
  
“To fuck me?”  
  
“ _No_. For you to tell them.”  
  
“Damn it Sam I _can’t_.”  
  
“It’d be easier than you think. I can divorce Jess.” Sam thumbs the pale spots on Dean’s neck. “I’ll bite you and we can be mates and raise our son. Damn it, Dean, I can _forgive_ you.”  
  
“I don’t want you to, and I’m not asking you to. You don’t get it.”  
  
Sam rests his forehead between Dean’s neck and shoulder. Dean’s ribs swell against his on a deep breath. “I’ll be honest, Sam, I don’t feel guilty. I did, before I left. Because Dad left me, and then I was gonna leave you? Didn’t seem right. But I got over it.”  
  
“You used me to have a baby. God, why?”  
  
“Because I was alone and I thought it would help.” Dean makes a frustrated noise. “What do you want me to say. It was wrong. But I’d do it again, ‘cause it did help. I didn’t have Dad, and I didn’t really have you even when I thought I did, but I did have James.”  
  
Dean presses his cheek into Sam’s hair. “Dad, uh. He’s.”  
  
“I know. James told me.”  
  
“I’ve been searching for leads. Don’t know if it’s the same thing that killed Mom or not, but it’s... you’re right. I know. Won’t bring him back, and I don’t want James growin’ up any way, shape or form how we did. I don’t know what I’m doing.”  
  
Dean relaxes against him. He turns his face in Sam’s shoulder, “You know, this isn’t really comforting. Can your stupid big brother get a real hug?”  
  
Sam smiles, “Yeah.” He moves back a bit to wrap his arms around Dean, and sighs when Dean hugs him back.  
  
It’s almost easy to believe things will be okay.  
  
\--  
  
Things are so high up in the air they’re orbiting a different sun, but Sam makes the most of the weekend by hanging out with James. He takes him to the movies several times, Chuck E. Cheese’s, the park, the community pool, and just tires the poor kid out to the point where he’s dead to the world before six and Sam has to carry him up to his house.  
  
He doesn’t bring him around Jessica, but he does have to crack and tell her about Dean’s reappearance, and that Sam’s an uncle now.  
  
She seems happy about it, vaguely. The scent of the neighbor is so thick on her Sam can’t even pick out his own anymore, and that’s fine. This situation would be worse if she still wanted him; he’d be the guilty-guilty mess he was back in Stanford.  
  
On Wednesday, Sam subsequently realizes he hasn’t had a drink in four days and picks up a new case—client with six DUIs to his name and a manslaughter charge for the last one.  
  
Took killing someone to learn his lesson.  
  
Or not, because the smell of vodka is leaking from the man’s pores when Sam sits down with him.  
  
He doesn’t have any kids, Sam’s glad to see.  
  
Sam gets home at seven as the sun is touching down.  
  
Jess isn’t home.  
  
 _Maybe she left me for good_ , Sam thinks as he loosens his tie. _For fucking_ Kirk.  
  
There’s nothing in his voicemail, anyway.  
  
Sam makes himself more coffee and picks through the mail she left on the table. Bills and the usual. No goodbye letter from Dean, which Sam worries he’ll get someday soon, because that’d be just like Dean to get his hopes up in a fuzzy dandelion just so he can blow it in the wind.  
  
Of course, if Dean was true to form, there wouldn’t be any letters.  
  
Sam shakes the thought out of his head and sits down with his coffee.  
  
He’s about to review his notes on the case when there’s a series of knocks at the door.  
  
Sam gets up to answer it, prepared to smile and politely say no to a discussion about Jehovah; he’s got a drunk driver to keep out of prison.  
  
It’s not a couple well-dressed men at the door; it’s Dean, in scruffy jeans and a well-faded shirt.  
  
“You gonna let me in?” Dean hoarses after Sam takes a few moments to just stare.  
  
“Yeah.” Sam steps out of the way to let Dean pass.  
  
“Where’s Jess?”  
  
Sam hands him a cup of coffee. “Over next door screwing the neighbor.”  
  
“I’m... very sorry to hear that.”  
  
Sam runs a hand through his hair and shrugs. “Fair’s fair.”  
  
Dean leans against the oven to drink his coffee and Sam finds himself not wanting to sit down, so he just stands across from Dean.  
  
Dean takes a long drink then looks down into the liquid, taps his fingers on the porcelain. “So, uh.” His lips twist darkly. “I told.” He takes another drink.  
  
Sam does too. It’s so quiet he can hear when Dean swallows.  
  
“Okay. How’d it go?”  
  
“‘Bout as good as you could expect. My kid hates me. Benny just looked. He looked at me like—bastard’s too good to say it but he said everything with that look. And then he asked what I wanted, what I wanted him to do.” Dean’s face crumbles and he turns around. The coffee cup skids along the countertop and he grips the edges of the oven.  
  
Sam watches his head drop between his shoulders. “If I wanted you still, and I guess, I guess he just saw it in my face. Every fuckin’ sick, freak thing. He said he understood why, and if I would be happier with you then...” Dean laughs. “Like I could be _happy_ with you.”  
  
“Dean, I—”  
  
“It’s not about being happy. This thing,” Dean turns to the side and gestures between them, “me and you, it’s not happy. Furthest from.”  
  
“I know,” Sam says thickly.  
  
“It’s the last real thing I got. Benny, I love him, but I was trying to be someone else, someone better, someone I’m not. Just pretending, trying to fake it till I make it, hoping it would feel right eventually. Like tryin’ to breathe fuckin’ water, man.”  
  
Sam nods, swallows. He knows exactly what Dean means.  
  
“Where’s James?” Sam asks.  
  
“Back at the house.” Dean scoffs. “Probably cursing my name as we speak.”  
  
“Isn’t he happy I’m his dad?”  
  
“He ain’t happy I lied to him his whole life. Like when I told you monsters were real.” Dean’s eyes dim. “Shit. That’s something else I need to—”  
  
“Dean.” Sam comes up to him. Dean looks somewhere around Sam’s shirt collar before finally dragging his eyes up. “That can wait, okay? I mean, I never told Jess.”  
  
“Wow.”  
  
“Yeah.” Sam scratches the back of his neck. “I didn’t need to, so.”  
  
“Tough call. Lie and let him have a childhood or tell the truth and take it away.”  
  
“It sounds pretty cut and dry when you put it like that.”  
  
“To be the lying nice guy or to be the honest asshole,” Dean chuckles. “I was already the last one today.”  
  
“He’ll accept it. I bet he’s back to bouncing around tomorrow. You did the right thing.”  
  
“You didn’t give me much choice.”  
  
Sam sighs. “If you were in my position you’d get pretty desperate too. Imagine James calling someone else om.”  
  
Dean winces. “Well, Sam, it sounds pretty cut and dry when you put it like that.”  
  
“See?” Sam laughs.  
  
Dean laughs too, but quickly sobers. “Benny’s a good guy. You know, he basically mated me ‘cause I asked him too. I got harassed about having a kid and no mate. It just seemed like the best thing to do at the time.”  
  
“What? You’re saying it was for _convenience_?”  
  
“Not all of it,” Dean says in a way that seems to lock a cage around further responses regarding the subject.  
  
Sam nods.  
  
Dean looks up from his wistful gaze and pins Sam’s heart with his big eyes. It’s just as much as a rush as it was when he was twenty-one.  
  
Dean raises his eyebrows and a hint of a small smile softens his lips. He cups his hand under Sam’s chin and tilts it down. Sam closes his eyes and the gap between them eases as their mouths press tight.  
  
After so long, the kiss feels like it’s too much for his body to handle. It really makes him feel something stupid and dreamlike inside; a door in his heart slamming open to let a million doves burst out and into the air.  
  
“Dean,” he says against Dean’s lips, feeling untethered, falling up into the sky. He reaches up to hold Dean’s face in both his hands and surges against him. _I want you I want you I want you_.  
  
“Okay,” Dean soothes. Sam kisses him harder. “Sam, when’s—Jess coming—back?”  
  
Sam doesn’t, can’t, answer. Tied by their lips, Sam walks Dean backwards out of the kitchen. There’s a sharp urgency pinwheeling inside him and he can’t bear to think or feel anything else but _Dean_.  
  
“Sammy,” Dean protests when Sam walks him into the master bedroom. “God, you had married sex with her in here.”  
  
“I’ll have...” Sam begins, out of breath. He puts his hands on Dean’s shoulders and eases him down onto the bed. “... Married sex with you in here.”  
  
In the plume of SamJess scent, Sam picks out Dean’s, swelling sweet and shy. He doesn’t give Dean time to say anything else, just follows him down.  
  
He burns his lips on Dean’s stubble, follows the short hair to Dean’s throat, the pale, mated spots on the left.  
  
“Do it,” Dean gasps, “God, just do it finally.” He puts a hand behind Sam’s head and pushes. “I’m, _fuck_ ,” Sam lets the points graze, “I’m ready.”  
  
“All mine, you, James?”  
  
“Yeah, yours. Won’t leave you.”  
  
Sam inhales painfully and squeezes his eyes shut. Dean tightens his fingers in his hair, “I swear.”  
  
For the second time in his life, Sam sinks his teeth through a set of joining spots.  
  
Dean’s reaction isn’t much like Jessica’s—he breathes out a large sigh and grips Sam’s shoulder blades. It’s pure relief and the right, real things finally slotting into place for both of them.  
  
When Sam pulls his teeth out and looks at his brother, he sees Dean has started crying.  
  
It’s unexpected, but Sam licks the copper from his lips and kisses Dean’s salty ones.  
  
Dean makes a choked sound and arches up. He rips at Sam’s shirt from the collar; buttons worth hundreds snap free.  
  
Sam _feels it_. He clacks their teeth and Dean bites his lips; Sam ruts down into him, hands finding hems.  
  
He wants Dean on top of him, riding him like no time has passed since that first night years ago, but Dean rolls onto his belly, displaying pale, smooth plane of back and delicate nape of neck, and Sam bites him there, and this is better.  
  
“Hurry up,” Dean growls, shoving his ass into Sam’s crotch.  
  
Sam growls back. He bites the edges of Dean’s shoulders, urging his teeth into the skin. Shallow bites, but enough to bleed, scab and scar. Enough to stay.  
  
“ _Sammy_.”  
  
Sam puts his forehead against Dean’s spine, looks down between their bodies, Dean’s soft cheeks nestled to his hips. He breathes out and takes a hold of himself, rubs the head between. It slides in Dean’s wetness and he moans.  
  
“Stop it. C’mon.”  
  
Sam nudges his hips forwards, and slides inside, a little, then all at once when he can’t take it anymore. He wraps his arm around Dean to anchor himself, feel Dean’s ribs expand like he’s been filled to the lungs.  
  
He pauses there. “Okay?”  
  
“Don’t you,” Dean gasps, “ask me if it’s okay, just go and don’t stop.”  
  
Sam smiles into Dean’s skin. He draws out slowly—Dean makes a frustrated sound beneath him. “What?” Sam licks the sweat beading along his spine. “I’m going and I haven’t stopped.”  
  
He lets Dean’s own suction pull him back inside and groans tightly at the squeeze. “You feel too good to not... savor, _ah_.”  
  
“Don’t wanna be savored.” Dean thrusts his ass back into Sam’s cock. “Wanna be devoured in one huge bite.”  
  
“ _Dean_.” Sam sits up on his knees, wraps his hands around Dean’s hips and gives a hard, heavy thrust that pushes Dean up the bed.  
  
Dean laughs breathlessly. “That’s it.”  
  
Sam loses himself in the harsh movement soon enough—after all they’ll have time for slow and savory married sex when they’re actually married.  
  
After a couple minutes, Dean draws himself up, sweat droplets falling down his back as he gets on his knees, leans forward to set his palms against the wall. Sam moves with him, and wow this is good; he can touch Dean’s nipples and cock and kiss him when Dean turns his head.  
  
“Please,” Dean moans, Sam stroking him with just his light fingertips up and down.  
  
Sam puts his chin on Dean’s shoulder to look down at his dick and finally wraps it up in both his hands, knees sliding apart for stability.  
  
He shakes his sweaty hair off his face and laughs, “What if, what if Jess just walked in on this.”  
  
“What?” Dean asks, dumb with dick.  
  
“You’re in front of me; she wouldn’t see you. I could be fucking anyone.” Sam cleans perspiration off his upper lip. “Would she even consider it could be my brother?”  
  
“Prob’ly. My ma- _a_ , anly sounds would give me away.” Dean laughs, which does something out-of-this-world to Sam’s dick.  
  
“I better fuck you harder then,” Sam says in his ear.  
  
“Yeah, j-just— _ah_ —in case.”  
  
Sam slams inside off a deep thrust, and they both almost face-plant in the wall from the force.  
  
Something falls down and smacks into Sam’s head before landing on the pillow. “Ow,” Sam hisses, tugging Dean back into position.  
  
“Your dick didn’t break did it?”  
  
“No, something hit my—how are you still talking?”  
  
Dean laughs some more, and Sam snaps off three rough thrusts. His knot pulls at Dean then, just starting to swell up, and that’s it for Dean. Sam feels him tense up all over and watches his dick shoot in his hands.  
  
Some ambitious spurts make it to the wall and the sound Dean makes is definitely not manly. “Fuck, _fuck_ ,” he gasps, gripping Sam’s wrists.  
  
Sam swears in return, grinding inside him, teeth grit hard. His knot balloons, catches, and his orgasm sweeps him up. He shudders against Dean, mouths words into his skin.  
  
They relax into a sweaty, labored breathing, singular entity. Sam holds Dean to him and sits back on his heels.  
  
Dean mutters something about his knee and reaches under it. He grabs what fell off the wall but he’s too out of it to open his eyes. He holds it up. “This fell on your head? What is it?”  
  
Sam blinks his sweat stung eyes to get a good look. He sees the T-shape and brown, polished color and recognizes it as the crucifix that was above the bed. “It’s Jesus.”  
  
“What? It’s Jesus...” Dean wipes his eyes with his arm and cracks them open.  
  
Sam feels him start shaking with laughter and grumbles.  
  
“Oh God, no. _Sam_.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“He hit you in the head!”  
  
“I still feel it.”  
  
“Dude, there’s no way _that_ can be a good sign.”  
  
 _  
  
the end_


End file.
